Well I'll be a grease monkeys uncle, he did get told to run it with no air filters 2x. I still wouldn't do that. They said not for long, but didnt say 5min, 1hr, 100 miles, 1000 miles. Changing air filters is a better diagnosis tool than no air filter to see if the problem goes away. Especially if they look dirty and look to be in need of a change. Every auto parts store I use can usually have filters in one day if not same day if it's not in stock. Sort of ironic that this is next to a post on the board right now about did an air filter failure ruin my engine?

But that's just my opinion and I'm not an expert. If had to throw caution to the wind, I'd still like wind to be filtered that goes down the throat of my engine. Just me.

The PO of my bus rebuilt the engine twice during the 20 years that he had it. The first time was because he wasn't paying attention one time and lugged it and overheated it. He did a quick cheap rebuild on it. The second time was because he had cut a hole in the air channel between the filters and the blower for a project he was working on, and took it out for a short drive before patching the hole. He went thru a construction area that had a lot of fine white powder on the road and it ate the engine. He told me that he did a major rebuild that time. This happened about 12-13 thousand miles before i got it so it should last me for a while.

You should be able to have air filters that present very little restriction. If yours are still oil bath, I would consider changing to paper elements. Or just plainly change out the 4 filters for one big one. Donaldson makes many filters and filter cans of different configurations.

Running an engine without the air filter for a few miles won't hurt it. The bus was driven enough without the filters to know that the problem was the air filters. Good Luck, TomC

They are probably the old oil-bath filters with a dry filter conversion. At least, they sound like it. I had the oil bath filter setup, and I removed it when I installed my new turbo'd engine. The PO of my bus carefully cleaned the wire mesh filters and ran them dry, and the engine was ruined. The gritty oil sludge was caked 1/4" thick on the inside of the air box, a whole new meaning to the term "dusted". I have heard different things about just putting a dry filter in the oil bath housing but really don't know. My advice on removing the air filter connection (I actually said to pull the top off the blower and check inside) was kind of run it till you get an answer, 5 or 10 miles maybe. It's kind of a toss-up which is worse, running with faulty clogged up filters or running with no filter for a few dozen miles. If it were me, what I'd do is what I did do - rip out the stock air filter setup complete and install the biggest Donaldson ECO that would fit. Mine kind of sits on the muffler cover and takes up the whole space beside the engine on the driver's side. But I am glad the problem has found a solution!

When I left Cliffords and headed East in August, l left my IR thermometer gun and hadn't been checking the tires even by touching by hand. Sure enough I blew the right front. Age? Low air? Heat? Who knows?

Has anyone ever blown a tire that they had checked and was running at normal temps? Has anyone ever blown a tire that they had not been checking?

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